Tuesday 21st Sept - In praise (sort of) of Millwall. Not quite “no-one” likes them!

“Fags, house keys, wallet, crossbow...Doreen, where’s the bloody crossbow? We’re at home to Notts County today. I need the bloody crossbow…”

Which, one can imagine, was the way the conversation went in the house somewhere in South-East London, April 1991, the morning of Millwall v Notts at the (Old) Den.

I can’t remember now why the police officer felt the need to bring out the confiscated crossbow and show it to County fan John and myself as we approached the visitors’ end. Perhaps we looked over confident. “Get yourself in quick you two, we’ve just stopped someone trying to get in with this. We think there’s more.” This was only my third visit to the Den and I really didn’t want to die a County fan. Fortunately, we got away intact.

I quite like Millwall. There, said it. It’s difficult as someone who constantly harps on about the good old days before football went all lah-dee-dah gentrified to not have a slight affection for such an, errr, ‘earthy’ club. I liked the Old Den. I like the New Den. I like the M.I.L.L.Daaaaaable-Yooooo….A.L.L thing. I like what the club has tried to do to be a proper community club.

I liked (quite, in a funny sort of way) the Del Boy wannabe we met on the bus between Brixton and Selhurst Park on day back in th 90s. All gold bling and sheepskin over casual-wear. “You Forest?” he asked of me and my then girlfriend. “Cos I’m…. Miiiiiilllwaaaaaallllll”, shoving gold sovereign type ring with Millwall lion embossed on it right up my left nostril. “But it’s OK, I’m on a day off,” he re-assuringly explained. “A daaaayyyyy orrrrrfffff, ha, haaaa!”

As we (and Millwall Man) got off the bus, he immediately scampered across the road, punched a Palace fan and ran back to join us. “Aren’t you on a day off?”

“Day off Millwall, mate,” he laughed, ” today I’m doing it for you lot. I’m a dirty Northern bastard.”

I liked the family of probably 4 generations who made slit-throat gestures at us on the coach the last time we went there - Great grandad about 75, youngest about 4. Between Christmas and New Year, 2018. “The grandkids are bored with that X-Box already, Reggie, why not take ‘em daaaahn the Den, threaten a few Northern bastards.” I like to think Grandad was the crossbow man. “Righto Doreen.”

That particular afternoon was pretty oppressive, as much for the horrible bickering between Forest factions over the merits of Aitor Karanka. Shortly after, I met some Cologne bruisers on the train to an away match at Union Berlin. They’d been at the Den that day, over specially to support Forest and had managed to find an ‘encounter’ (deliberately) with a Millwall group. They expressed their disappointment with our support and willingness to fight with Millwall when we’d clearly been so willing to fight amongst ourselves.

For me, the Millwall legend started on the afternoon in March ‘78, when an FA Cup quarter at home to Ipswich descended into carnage. Fighting broke out on the terraces, spilled onto the pitch. Ipswich fans and coached were attacked with bottles, iron bars, knives. Images of bloodied children and elderly men on Match of the Day, Bobby Robson, not known for being the most demonstrative of men, angrily responded “They’re animals - I’d set the flame throwers on them.”

‘Highlights’ here, on and off the pitch, from about a minute in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrstfUSVtss

The history of violence had started much, much earlier. There had been a major outbreak in a Third Division match at Loftus Road in 1966. As QPR strolled to a 6-1 win, coins were flung and there were repeated pitch invasions.

’70s manager Gordon Jago, an eloquent, progressive type had gone some way to improving the image. Accordingly, he invited Panorama in to make a fly-on-the-wall documentary, which he hoped would improve the club’s PR and put to bed the idea that there was just something ‘bad’ in the air around Cold Blow Lane, something that some say had always existed, from the days of gangsters the Richardsons and further back to the times of Oswald Mosley’s Nazi Blackshirts.

Jago’s plan backfired spectactularly. The programme, aired in ‘78 was a disaster, The Panorama team seemed to have an agenda to show that football hooiiganism was organised and growing in threat. It’s became a celebration of hard-core groups The F-Troop, The Half-Way Line and The Treatment, who wore a sinister surgical mask for their ‘activities’. It gave a voice to the then rising National Front. Millwall executives pleaded for it not to be shown, but it was broadcast regardless. It makes fascinating viewing now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ighcTmfAfr4

Again though, Millwall’s reputation recovered and improved quietly until (another) FA Cup quarter final, this time at Luton. The ensuing riots there bought down the wrath of the Thatcher government and gave rise to much tighter controls on fans and, for a while, the spectre of membership-only matches played with no away fans. Indeed, Luton - Chairman David Evans, a Conservative MP - experimented with this for a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B5670vcqIM

The riot itself started as the players warmed up and continued throughout the evening. At it’s height, a police officer was hit on the head with a concrete block and stopped breathing. As a colleague tried to relieve him (successfully) in the centre circle, he too had a concrete block dropped on his head. Subsequent investigation suggested an ‘elite’ alliance of hooligans froom a number of London clubs were responsble, but the blow to Millwall was huge.

Neil Kinnock blamed poverty and unemployment. Thatcher blamed it all on a lack of Victorian values. Football felt doomed and when Heysel happened the next month, it looked all over bar the shouting.

But, as we know, ultimately football recovered. Millwall recovered. The Den is still intimidating and the threat of violence lingers. There has been trouble in Nottingham with Millwall fans trashing the Royal Children one evening some years back. There is still the occcasional report of some racist abuse at the Den, but Millwall are far from alone in this. I’m no apologist for thugs or racists and every club has them. Millwall seem to have done a lot to be a real community club and are a welcome antidote, for me, to the sanitised football experience we’re typically served up these days. If they can keep that edge whilst staying on the right side as far as actual violence and (any) racism goes, I’m all for them. A Forest win on Saturday would still be welcome though!